


dark water draining north

by rukafais



Category: Fallen London|Echo Bazaar
Genre: Gen, driving yourself insane for fun and profit, why seeking the name is a terrible idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, the dreams are different, and they distract you momentarily from the weight of your choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dark water draining north

Sometimes

you do not dream purely of water.

Mostly, there is weighty silence, and starlight. Water swirls, slick and heavy, hollowed out with knowledge.   
  
Hungry.   
  
The scars itch, ever-present friends in your journey north. Sometimes blood spatters across your blankets in a frenzy of scratching, old wounds reopened. The wind creeps through the cracks in your window, an urgent curl of breath snatched from the Unterzee.

_North_ , it whispers. _North._

At those times, your bones clack. Your head lolls carelessly on the pillow, like a doll, a puppet. Your limbs are lead and your joints are chains. The dreams catch you, buoy you up. You dangle lifelessly, chains biting into the sky like anchors, suspended by your own folly.

You don't remember what _was_ important. The only thing that _is_ important is the Name.

The Name, the Number. Your teeth and your belly ache with hunger, set alight. Whatever you eat is never enough.

(And you eat much. Sometimes you wake and you find yourself bleeding from teeth-marks. You know they are yours.)

Nothing is more real than what you seek. So you dream.

But.

Sometimes the dreams are different.  
  
Sometimes  
  
there is darkness, lit by the slow burn of fragile lights  
  
pale ghost fire, the colour of tallow, sinking beneath the waves  
  
punctuated by a frantic, stuttering heartbeat and the punctuation of screaming thought  
  
 _why can't you breathe? they've betrayed you. they've betrayed you-_  
  
The water is bitter in your mouth.  
  
Breathing is a struggle; blood stains the sharp walls in swirls and patterns until the well

_the Well_  
  
the well is red  
  
has it always been red?  
  
You pull in air and choke on water, tangy with blood. You go down again. Your eyes flick up, involuntarily, hoping for salvation.  
  
There is none.

Nothing pulls you from the water.  
  
For a moment, it feels too real to be a dream  
  
but when you wake, nothing remains of the dream

_the memory (his memory)_  
  
And eventually  
  
nothing will remain of you.


End file.
